Sitting around and doing nothing has never been a character trait of Austria. Here, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which are part of the framework of the Agenda 2030 are taken very seriously. Therefore, the BMDW, the federal ministry for Digitalization and Business Location, invited international experts on March 21 to discuss opportunities to tackle the challenges of megatrends like climate change, digitization and urbanization.

The Paris Climate Agreement should drive us to head for a completely decarbonized, sustainable energy future. However, this change comes with a lot of challenges. Large shares of renewable, often volatile sources of energy, integrated sector coupling and decentralized energy conversion structures increase the system complexity significantly. Additionally, required, affordable energy costs for the end user and the guarantee of security of supply also play a vital part.

If it rains tomorrow, we know thanks to the weather forecast of the previous evening, that we don´t leave the house without an umbrella the next morning. So far, solar thermal systems have not been able to include such weather forecasts in their regulation. A smart system regulation now brings higher, solar carriers, low costs and less maintenance. This was developed in the project SPC, “Solar Predictive Control” in close cooperation between SOLID and Bioenergy 2020+ GmbH.